Are Improvement Goals Focused on Outcomes Important to Customers and Stakeholders?
2.4 Has the Agency Selected and Prioritized Processes for Improvement? 2.5 Criteria Leading organizations recognize that improvement goals should flow from a fact-based performance analysis and be directed at achieving organizational missions. These organizations typically assess which of their processes are in greatest need of improvement in terms of cost, quality, and timeliness. By analyzing the gap between where they are and where they need to be to achieve desired outcomes, agencies can target those processes that are in most need of improvement, set realistic improvement goals, and select an appropriate process improvement technique. One method often used is benchmarking. Benchmarking provides reference points for defining ambitious, yet achievable, performance goals and also helps the agency learn methods that others have used to improve their business processes. 2.1 Has the Agency Assessed the Gaps Between Current Performance and Customer/Stakeholder Needs? Measuring the perfor
